Problem with them open sourcing their platform is that the platform base is used in enterprise and how the bulk of their revenue is made... Who wants to buy milk when the cow is being given away?
They are getting hosting deals for many of these companies themselves. Why spin up your own github clone when you can just use github?
And gitlab is now 99% feature-compatible with github. If you aren't using the developer ecosystem of github.com, you are not missing much using the free software option already.
The article states that it will soon be able to come pick you up from long distances and even stop and charge itself. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have to do that stuff.
Nice write up, Justin! I was one of the first engineers at a competitor of TeeSpring's, and we tackled the same problems. We used Fabric.js in our second iteration (first was jQuery).
We have a similar feature at 43Layers (e.g. [1]) and went through a couple iterations. Ours was made more complex because it has to mesh with a 3D canvas, so originally it was a combination of overlapping DOM elements, an SVG element, and a 3D canvas. We also use React, so movement of the selection box created events that generally had to flow through multiple react elements. Getting the coordinates of everything matching in all three contexts was an exercise in annoyance (given how simple it seems), especially for things like fonts which have bounding boxes which bear only a passing relationship with the actual bounding boxes of the text on screen.
Eventually, we ditched the SVG and moved more things into 3D, which made for a better design in the end. For example, now we calculate 3D geometry for the font from its curves and get an actual real bounding box for it.
Anyway, it's interesting to read about how other people solved the same problem.
We used fabric.js as well to create custom laser printed/engraved products. As with you, our first iteration was just standard javascript with jQuery, but fabric.js made a lot of things much easier.
Thanks! That site is like an eery Dublin-doppelganger of my plans, would be cool to chat with you about it (though I get the impression you're no longer with them).
I'm no longer the CTO, but I'm still friends with the rest of the founders and lend a hand every now and again (I'm still a shareholder in the company).
Drop me a line at malonso [at] loopbit.com if you want :)
I really dig the idea behind the site. I am not a UX developer, but I am improving and the service would be invaluable. What can we do to help get the iteration back in place?
I assume the reason for not going with DO, Linode or AWS was you're not a devOps guy, which is understandable. We can help you with that.
I manage my blog (uses Jekyll) in Cloud9, one of those web-IDEs with a VPS backend, and it's great. You can get access to your own dev-box from any browser.
Great response. Too many people criticize someone's work comparing it to similar stuff that's been around since just before the dinosaurs went extinct with responses like "what makes yours better?"
It doesn't. It's just something you made. Use it or not. Nobody cares.
Dokku is great if you want to host all apps on a single server. I had used it for a while.
Switched to using github to push to, which fires off a build on a ci server, which fires off a push to docker registry and my server pulls that and rolls the versions.
This setup allows me to have everything on a single server until an app starts needing it's own, then I deploy a new CoreOS server and transfer the fire system to that one.
I'm 30 years old and haven't been to a doctor in about 10 years outside of simple things that I paid out of my own pocket. Nothing that a year of healthcare would cover, and considerably lower than it'd cost.
I'd have paid in tens of thousands of dollars over the course of that time, and for what? What ifs?
When you're 60 years old you're going to want doctors and nurses who know what they're doing. That means someone needs to pay now to train them and their replacements.
So what you're saying is if I don't go to the doctor for 10 years, but pay $350/mo over the course of that 10 years for an insurance plan, the insurance company uses the money to fund college education for nurses and doctors?
